Protection switching is widely known in radio communications. In general terms, protection switching is a mechanism used in a communications network in order to ensure connectivity in case of failure or malfunction of a network element or a link involved in transmission or reception of data from one end of the network to another. One of the widely used protection schemes typically involves using a main channel and a protection channel.
Recently, techniques have been developed in order to transmit packets over radio links. Such type of transmission also would typically require a protection mechanism. The known techniques for protection switching of packets over radio links typically make use of two radio channels of the radio link based on a 1+1 linear protection switching architecture or a 1:1 linear protection switching architecture.